Zhuang Li sat in the reception room with his eyes closed, a cup of hot tea in front of him.
About twenty minutes later, a tall, handsome male police officer came in and said politely, "Sorry, Mr. Zhuang, I've kept you waiting."
Zhuang Li immediately opened his eyes and looked at the person who came.
"Zhang Fuhai should have confessed everything, right? Can I go back now?" he asked directly.
"Mr. Zhuang, judging by the current evidence, you appear to have no connection to this case. But we'd like to know how you guessed that Liao Qi and his son would die in three days, and how you knew that the little girl was the reincarnation of Zhang Fuhai's daughter?"
The policeman softened his tone and added, "This case is closed, and you won't be involved anymore, so just treat it as a casual conversation. We're just satisfying our curiosity."
Zhuang Li glanced at the name tag on the man's chest and spoke slowly, "Officer Zhou Cheng, I believe you've encountered cases stranger than this one, and people stranger than me, so there's absolutely no need for you to ask me for information. As someone in the government, you should know more about the world than I do. You've encountered plenty of monsters lurking in the darkness, haven't you? People like me are nothing."
He certainly knew where the power to constantly delete information about ghosts and monsters from the internet came from. Only a national-level government could block the news so completely.
Therefore, state agencies should have known long ago that there are two sides to this world, and may even have had deeper contact with the dark side.
Zhou Cheng's pretended relaxed expression gradually faded, and his face became more and more serious.
How could someone who could see horoscopes and peer into reincarnation be insignificant? However, since the man was unwilling to cooperate, the police couldn't possibly pry him open with tools. There was no benefit to them in offending such an ignorant individual.
"So what do you think of this world?" Zhou Cheng asked a question with a very profound connotation.
"The light is slowly being swallowed by darkness. On the day of apocalypse, the devil will descend and the true God will die." Zhuang Li said slowly, word by word.
He closed his eyes, suppressing the pain in his heart. That true God was his lover.
Zhou Cheng opened his mouth, but for a long time he could not utter a word. The intense trembling and despair within him left him speechless for a moment. After a long moment, he asked in a hoarse voice, "Is this the future you saw in your horoscope?"
"This is not the future, this is what is happening right now." Zhuang Li stretched out a slender index finger and tapped the table lightly.
Zhou Cheng stared at his fingertips, cold sweat pouring down his face.
Seeing his reaction, Zhuang Li understood that the official position was the same as his own, and they were all looking for ways to eliminate the darkness.
"Therefore, all evil spirits, including demons, must be killed." Zhuang Li clicked on the desktop again and said in a cold tone.
Zhou Cheng followed the finger, slowly looking into Zhuang Li's murderous eyes, and gradually realized that this person must be a friend. However, their team had been infiltrated by taskers too many times, and had lost too many like-minded comrades. They no longer dared to trust anyone easily.
It is not enough to just feel which side Zhuang Li is on, we need to try it out again.
Thinking of this, Zhou Cheng made up his mind and bowed, saying, "Please wait a moment. I have a file here that I'd like you to refer to."
Zhuang Li stretched out his hand and made a gesture of acceptance.
Zhou Cheng quickly brought over a thick stack of files and explained, "This is a case we've been unable to uncover. So far, there have been a total of twenty-two victims, and new victims appear almost daily. Sometimes, up to five people are murdered in a single day. If this continues, I believe the murderer's rate of murder will only increase."
Zhou Cheng opened the file bag and took out the relevant autopsy report, scene photos, visit records and other materials one by one.
"The victims were all women or men living alone, killed at night, and found lying in bed without exception. There were no signs of intrusion or struggle. They died peacefully, as if they were asleep. Forensic autopsies revealed that their brains were gone, and their skulls were completely empty."
Zhou Cheng wiped his face, a hint of fear in his eyes. "How did they die? What caused their brains to be hollowed out overnight? We asked experts to examine the bodies, and they found no traces of witchcraft, curses, or black magic, nor did they detect any Yin Qi. In other words, it wasn't a curse, evil ghost, evil spirit, poisonous insect, or black magic that killed them."
Zhou Cheng spread all the information out on the table, his eyes scanning these fragments that were completely unable to piece together the truth.
He had always known that the world was terrible, but he had no idea it had deteriorated to this extent.
The fate of mankind may really be as Zhuang Li predicted, moving step by step towards the apocalypse.
"If this case remains unsolved, the death toll will continue to rise. We've discovered that the killer's methods have become increasingly sophisticated, and his killing rate is accelerating. Initially, we only found one victim every few weeks; later, we found victims every day; and now, we find several victims a day."
Zhou Cheng's voice trembled. "Can you imagine the murderer killing four or five people simultaneously in different parts of China in one night? What method did he use? Some of the victims were even thousands of kilometers away. I don't know how the murderer could travel to so many cities in one night. What is it?"
He looked at Zhuang Li, who was busy reading the documents, with hope. He hoped that this person could give them an answer.
At this moment, several more policemen came in and stood beside Zhuang Li, all with an eager expression of thirsting for the truth on their faces.
"It's very simple, because there are many murderers." Zhuang Li said lightly.
Zhou Cheng's sharp eyes suddenly shone brightly.
"Do you know anything?" he asked eagerly.
The other policemen hurriedly sat down and stared at Zhuang Li.
"I found an interesting detail." Zhuang Li picked up his tablet and pulled up a video recorded by a forensic doctor during an autopsy. He pointed at one of the victim's nostrils and asked, "Have you ever tested the composition of this mucus?"
Zhou Cheng quickly picked up the autopsy report and took a look, then shook his head regretfully, "No. The mucus in the nostrils should be snot, right?"
If he hadn't looked carefully, he really wouldn't have noticed that the right nostril of the corpse was filled with a yellowish mucus.
Zhuang Li pulled up several other autopsy videos and said, "Every corpse had one nostril filled with mucus. This is a common feature, but you have overlooked it. You took it for granted that it was snot, and this caused you to miss the truth. Now, please immediately test the composition of this mucus."
Zhou Cheng quickly stood up and walked towards the door.
Zhuang Li said slowly: "If I'm guessing correctly, this mucus should be semen."
Zhou Cheng stumbled and nearly fell while walking. He turned around suddenly and asked in disbelief, "What did you say this was?"
Why would the killer smear that substance in the victim's nostrils? Is it a perverted sexual fetish? And even more terrifying, how could so many murderers with the same fetish appear in society at the same time?
The more Zhou Cheng thought about it, the more confused he became. Several of his subordinates had already hurried out of the reception room and headed for the Forensic Center.
Zhuang Li instructed, "By the way, let your technicians do a DNA test. This thing should belong to the same person."
Zhou Cheng was once again confused by this sentence and said in a hoarse voice, "Didn't you just say there were multiple murderers?"
"Yes, there are many murderers, but they were all conceived by the same person." Zhuang Li kept arranging the photos on the table, brushing the useless ones aside and moving the ones that could reveal the truth to the center of the table.
In the end, he selected a total of forty-four photos, twenty-two of which were taken of glass bottles placed in the homes of different victims; the other twenty-two were taken of incubators of various brands, each of which was adjusted to a temperature of around forty-one or forty-two degrees.
All the victims had incubators in their homes, a detail the police had already noticed. However, they hadn't noticed that each victim also had a small bottle in their home. This was because glass bottles are so common that almost everyone has one in their home.
"Thermostatic box, glass bottle, is there any connection between them?" Zhou Cheng stared at the photos.
Zhuang Li waved his hand and said, "I'll tell you when the forensic examination results come out and confirm my guess."
Zhou Cheng couldn't sit still anymore and kept calling to urge them.
Ten minutes later, his subordinate called back, his tone very excited: "Boss, Mr. Zhuang's guess is correct! Every victim's nostril was smeared with that stuff! The DNA is still being tested, and the results are not yet out."
Zhou Cheng turned on the speakerphone, so Zhuang Li heard everything without him having to repeat it.
His suspicions were fully confirmed. He slowly said, "If that's the case, then this mucus must be highly decomposed, and DNA can't be detected. But you can give it a try."
As soon as he finished speaking, the police officer on the other end of the phone said in extreme disappointment: "Boss, the forensic doctor just told me that this liquid is already highly decomposed and no DNA can be detected!"
Zhou Cheng looked at Zhuang Li, his eyes gleaming with excitement. He took a deep breath, then bent down and said carefully, "Please tell me the truth!"
Zhuang Li lowered his eyes and pondered, "I once read in an ancient book a description of a black magic technique for nurturing life: Place male semen in a glass bottle, seal it, and store it at the same temperature as a horse's uterus for forty days. Once it gradually decays and begins to wriggle, water it with your own blood daily. Eventually, a human the size of a fingertip will be conceived."
Zhuang Li pointed to the nostrils of the deceased in the video, which were filled with yellow mucus, and said, "I guess these beings, bred by black magic, took advantage of the deceased's deep sleep, penetrated their brains through their nostrils, and devoured their brain marrow. That's why each of the deceased sleeps so peacefully, because they have no idea what a terrifying creature they have nurtured."
Today, Zhuang Li has a comprehensive understanding of magic, Taoism, witchcraft and other strange arts, and can be called an encyclopedia of mysticism.
These fragments, which have no meaning at all in the eyes of others, can be easily retrieved by him to find keywords and piece together the truth.
He stared into Zhou Cheng's horrified eyes and gave a final hint: "You should investigate how these deceased people knew about this black magic, and from whom they got the slime and glass bottle. If you find this person, the case will be solved."
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